Back in January (lowers head in shame) I started a series about mobile learning. I wanted to know more about it. Well, here we are… finally. After quite a bit of research and my own learning over the last few months here are some things I think could be helpful. What is mobile learning? Mobile learning or mLearning is a vast topic. There are a lot of different ways to interpret it but I’ve chosen to start with its simplest form. Mobile learning is any type of content a learner can or might access while on the go. It doesn’t have to be formal learning but it can be. What does that look like? Videos Does anyone need to know how to take apart their dishwasher to find the filter? Last month I did. I pulled out my phone and brought up YouTube. A simple search for my dishwasher model and I found exactly what I needed. Mobile learning – on demand! Articles Have you ever accessed Wikipedia or a news site from your phone or tablet? Have you ever looked something up while on the go? I’m sure you have. Most of us do. I Google constantly. It’s a verb now! It’s not just the name of a major tech company. Not to mention how often I see the new slang LMGTFYLet Me Google That For You in Facebook groups and comment threads. Photos and infographics There are thousands of photos and job aids available for all kinds of information. Need to learn the periodic table? There’s an infographic for that from the Royal Society of Chemistry. What...

I’m tackling at least one new learning trend, tool or idea each month this year. It’s all part of my efforts to grow my own skills and bring more to our clients. Mostly though, I need to start being a “lifelong learner” again – something I haven’t been very good at in the past year. This month, I want to learn more about mobile learning. We all know mobile learning or mLearning about learning on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. I know that my favourite authoring tool (Articulate Storyline) publishes to mobile-friendly formats like HTML5 but what’s really involved in developing successfully for a mobile learner? So, this month, I’m going to dive a little bit and answer a few questions for myself and hopefully for you too. Sure, I’m not the first one to discover this… it’s been a trend for a while. I’m allowed to catch up, right? My questions Here’s a few questions I want to answer: What exactly is mobile learning? I’m going to explore more examples and see how “traditional” learning is converting to mobile. Why are learners looking for mobile solutions? Do they need on-demand learning or is it just convenience of having their phone wherever they are? What should we do differently if we know some of our audience is mobile? How do we design (and develop) for both mobile and non-mobile learners? When and how do we consider learners using multiple devices? How am I going to answer them? Google is my friend but I also have bookmarks from TD.org and Allen Interactions to take a look at. Of course, I’m also going...

For quite a while I couldn’t really talk about any of the many eLearning and other instructional design projects I was working on because they were covered by either a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) or other restrictions. I really wanted to start building my portfolio so I embarked on journey to create a fictitious company with a fictitious performance problem. The company’s name is Gas Eight. You can read the company profile I created here. In short, the fictitious company was having challenges with employees not following the dress code. The end result was that employees needed a refresher on the dress code and managers needed new ways to discuss infractions with their employees. In another post I’ll go into more about some of the reasons why I chose the performance improvement plan that I did. For now, I’d like to let you see the demonstration of the simple, scenario-based course I designed to relaunch the dress code to Gas Eight’s employees. The course isn’t complete in the demo but I’m sure you’ll get the idea. Why did I choose scenarios? In this case, scenarios would allow employees to explore various situations that were common dress code violations at Gas Eight. By presenting employees with choices and then asking employees to back up those choices with further choices, it allowed employees to demonstrate and practice. Why not just make them sign off on the policy and review key points? Wouldn’t that be faster? In cases like these, employees often have been asked previously to read the policy (doesn’t just apply to dress code; this can apply to any policy) but...

Today we can say that Hemeon Learning Inc. is officially open for business! We’re so excited to share our newly designed website with you (thanks to Lara Spence and her team for their fantastic design & help building). Check out the site and drop us a line with your thoughts. Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and connect with us on Twitter too. We’d love to hear from...

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